A heartwarming picture shows a woman holding her surrogate shortly after the birth of her kid. Three miscarriages in two years while attempting to create a second child devastated Texas parents Mirelle Leguia, 37, and Jason Porras, 39, who are also parents to Nico, 7. The couple chose to downsize their home and utilize their funds to pay for surrogacy and IVF after being told they had unexplained infertility. Christine Puryear, a surrogate mother who is 31 years old, assisted Mirelle and Jason in delivering their baby Luca in April.
A photographer was present to document the moments before and after the baby was delivered for Mirelle, Jason, Christine, and Christine’s 32-year-old husband George. Since then, they have released heartbreaking and candid photos of the baby’s birth to raise awareness of surrogacy and inspire other hopeful parents. After three painful miscarriages, Mirelle said: “We sought guidance from a reproductive specialist who suggested that we should explore surrogacy. We instantly saw that using our own embryos would be the best course of action for us once we knew we could do so.
Our son Nico, who is now 7 years old, needed a brother, so we were fortunate to meet Christine in 2018. She is a hopeful, nearby surrogate who is working with us so that we could make sure we didn’t miss an appointment. We began our surrogacy journey with Shared Conception in Houston. To get to know one another better, the pair began video chatting with Christine. They also underwent thorough psychological evaluations to ensure that they were both ready. Despite the fact that Christine wasn’t a surrogate before, I feel like I’ve known her for years and I have entire faith in her.
Only three of the ten retrieved embryos—two girls and one boy—were fertilized by the clinic. We were thrilled when the third became live in July 2019 because it was our last shot after the first two female embryos from 2018 failed to implant. Mirelle said of the birth: “It was the most incredible moment, and I arranged for a photographer to record it all so we could look back at the time our family was complete. In July of 2019, Christine became pregnant, making 2019 the surrogate Mirelle and Jason first met.
It was challenging to remain worry-free during Christine’s pregnancy, said Mirelle, especially in light of everything we’ve been through. However, we were relieved when we noticed our child on the sonographer’s display he was six weeks old.
As the weeks passed, it was a relief to watch our baby continue to develop healthily each week. It was an emotional time. We are happy that Nico has a sibling. However, it was difficult to watch someone else hold our child, and I was concerned that I wouldn’t become as close to the child as I had to Nico. My friends then informed me that I could breastfeed Luca on my own by “boosting lactation.” On April 21, Christine was born, and Mirelle considers it to be one of the most memorable times in their lives. Christine called to let us know that she was in labor, so we hurriedly got in the car and drove to her house, the woman continued. She desires a natural delivery. The four of us ended up in bed with Christine, me, Jason and her husband and she pushed herself into contractions.
The four of them went to bed to transfer the placenta after Christine gave birth in the bathroom. I was prepared for my final push and there were two midwives there to assist. When Christine took her final deep breath, I cradled our infant in my lap as I could see his head coming into view. We are extremely grateful that Christine fulfills her desire of bearing children for a couple because that has always been her dream. We brought home our son, whom we called Luca, three hours after he was born. Since it costs $50,000, the IVF clinic and medications are typically not as expensive as ours, but we ultimately needed to complete seven cycles, use two unsuccessful embryos, and perform four dummy cycles to check if it worked. Is it the right time or not? But it was more than worth it, now we couldn’t be happier to begin our life together.
It took us two years to get pregnant with our first son 7 years ago and from that moment on, I knew I wanted to help another family by surrogacy. My husband, George, totally agrees with this idea but after consulting with a surrogacy company in 2013 we decided to finish our own family first due to the risks. But after having two more sons of our own, we decided it was finally time to be a surrogate in 2018. Mirelle and Jason were there for every appointment and helping them get things done. Family kindness is extraordinary.
